


Take This All Away

by icandrawamoth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drinking, Execution, Gen, I Made Myself Cry, Tumblr Prompt, Unhappy Ending, this is the worst, title from Linkin Park's 'Given Up'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 01:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14225745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icandrawamoth/pseuds/icandrawamoth
Summary: “For the murders of Corran Horn and Bror Jace as well as treason against the New Republic, this tribunal finds the defendant, Captain Tycho Celchu, guilty. These crimes carry the death penalty.”





	Take This All Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aphorisnt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphorisnt/gifts).



“For the murders of Corran Horn and Bror Jace as well as treason against the New Republic, this tribunal finds the defendant, Captain Tycho Celchu, guilty. These crimes carry the death penalty.”

Wedge shoots to his feet without a thought. “No! You're innocent! Tell them you're innocent!” He tries to meet Tycho's gaze, but he's only closed his eyes and bowed his head at the pronouncement. Now he flinches at Wedge's words.

“Sit down, Commander!” Admiral Ackbar insists. “Or we will be forced to have you removed from this courtroom.” There is none of the sympathy or understanding in his words Wedge might usually find there.

Wedge looks to Tycho again, desperate, finds blue eyes gazing back at him. Tycho doesn't even look scared, only tired. He gives Wedge a little nod.

Shaking, Wedge stiffly resumes his seat. There's a still a chance, he tells himself. They can try to appeal. Nawara is good. But when he looks to the Twi'lek lawyer, the defeated expression on his face doesn't give Wedge much hope.

 

“I've already started asking,” Nawara says heavily a few hours later. “It doesn't look like an appeal is in the cards for us. Unless the tribunal reverses its decision, there's nothing more I can do. I'm sorry, Captain.”

Back in his cage of a cell, Tycho nods slowly. “You did all you could, Nawara. I couldn't ask for more than that.”

“How can you be so calm?” Wedge insists, slamming his hands against the transparisteel between them. The guard at the door shifts warily, but Wedge doesn't care. “This is your _life_ , Tycho!”

Tycho spreads his hands, finally letting a touch of helplessness show, and Wedge hates that he asked for it. “Tell me what to do, Wedge. If you think it will help to scream and throw things and insist on my innocence when a pile of evidence incriminates me, I will.”

Wedge whirls away, hands raking through his hair in frustration. “There has to be something we can do,” he grits out. “I'm not going to let them kill you.” He pushes back at the chill the very words press on his heart and cuts his eyes to Nawara. “Give me options, Counselor.”

Nawara raises his arms in a gesture of powerlessness, but Tycho's voice cuts off any reply. “Leave him be, Wedge. He already told you there's nothing.”

Wedge turns back, breath suddenly stunned out of him. “You've given up.”

Tycho's unblinking gaze doesn't leave Wedge as he says, “Nawara, may we have some privacy?”

“Of course.” In a moment, the lawyer is gone.

“You have, haven't you?” Wedge moves closer to the cell again, wondering why he suddenly feels betrayed. “After everything-”

“Yes, after everything, Wedge.” Tycho's eyes flash, the first real emotion Wedge has seen from him in – how long? “After three months of torture, three of prison time, two more of prison time disguised as debriefing, and nearly two years of being trusted by absolutely no one regardless of what I did and what I sacrificed.”

“ _I_ trust you. I always did.”

“I know.” Tycho smiles, genuine and heartbreaking. “And you have no idea how much that's meant to me. But everything's over now. Let it end.” He adds, quieter – Wedge has to lean in to hear him – “Perhaps this was the only way I could ever be free.”

It makes Wedge angry. Tycho has always been so strong. Always under control, always optimistic. Never _defeated_. Well, Wedge will have to be strong for both of them now.

“I'm not letting you give up,” he insists. “I'm putting a stop to this.”

And with that, he turns and heads for the door. Tycho calls after him, but he doesn't stop. Then again, his friend's voice more desperate this time.

“What?”

“Don't do anything stupid, Wedge,” Tycho implores. “Don't do anything you're going to regret when I'm gone.”

The inevitability of the words sets Wedge's teeth on edge. He turns away without a response.

 

Wedge threatens to resign his commission just to get someone to listen to him, and when no one will, he goes through with it. He lets Ackbar drag him into his office and try to talk what he sees as sense into him, but Wedge's mind is made up. If no one is will to take a second look at the case of an innocent man, one who gave up everything for the Rebellion and then the New Republic again and again, he wants no part of that system. Ackbar eventually stops trying, though it's clear he's not happy, and he waves Wedge away.

It takes a few hours for it to set in. Wedge has been a soldier for nearly a decade. He doesn't know what to with his temporary freedom as he waits for his former superiors to realize their mistake. He may know he's easily replaceable by two dozen other just as skilled and experienced commanders, but no one else has ever seemed to realize that. They'll want him back; he's sure of it. Then they'll listen to him.

He goes to visit Tycho in his cell – only to receive a shock. Now a civilian, Wedge no longer has the clearance he needs to see his friend. He clenches his jaw and makes himself stay calm as he walks away. This will all be over soon.

It isn't. A day passes, then two, and Wedge hears nothing. He contacts Nawara, cuts him off when he starts talking about how the squadron is adjusting to Wedge leaving and asks about Tycho.

The execution has been scheduled for the end of the week.

 

Wedge begs like he never has before. Please, he says. Please, he realized his mistake. If nothing can be done for Tycho, as least let him come back. Let him be there with his closet friend in his final moments.

They tell him no. They don't want officers as fickle as he's shown himself to be, regardless of their record. They don't want someone with this suspicious association and vocal support of a known criminal. Wedge Antilles is no longer part of the New Republic Armed Forces, and that fact will remain.

He loses it. He screams and pounds his fists and trashes his temporary lodgings. He begs some more. He calls every contact he has and gets no help, only sanctimonious brush-offs and pitying denials.

He finds an empty patch of street across from the building where Tycho is being held and watches for hours. Plots half a dozen ways he and the Rogues could break him out. Knows none of them would work, that this, the very heart of so-called New Republic justice, is impenetrable.

Finally, exhausted and heartsick, he drags himself away.

 

He doesn't sleep, merely sits in his ruined hotel room and stares. He knows rest wouldn't come. In the morning, the government he's trusted and fought for and was always prepared to give his life in defense of will execute his best friend, and Wedge is powerless to stop it. Unable to even say goodbye to the man he shared so much with over the years.

Before the sun has touched the sky, he leaves the hotel again. He takes a turbolift to one of Coruscant's lower levels and finds a seedy twenty-four hour cantina. It's the only way he can think to possibly survive this day.

By the time the sun would be up were he able to view, he's more than a little bleary. But he never forgets why he's here, and he lifts his sleeve to watch his chrono tick over to the appointed time.

Somewhere above him, Tycho is being strapped to a table, a needle slid into his arm. Somewhere above him, somber-faced witnesses watch the greatest crime the New Republic has ever committed and never question the act. Somewhere above him, Tycho is being murdered.

Wedge downs another shot and gestures for a refill, wishing it were enough to block out what his life has become. No Tycho. No career. No justice in the galaxy.

Perhaps Tycho was right to give up.

 

Two days later, Corran Horn escapes from the _Lusankya_. Tycho's name is cleared.

For Wedge, nothing changes.

**Author's Note:**

> For an [angst starter meme](https://writersblockbecomesunblocked.tumblr.com/post/167184876471/writing-prompt-12-angst-1-i-just-wanted-to-be); the sentence chosen was “YOURE INNOCENT! TELL THEM YOURE INNOCENT!”


End file.
